


And I Let Him In

by janjanfollower



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (in the form of softcore porn), Canon Het Relationship, Character Study, F/M, First Time, Gentle Sex, that last one is a real ao3 tag too, vague descriptions of sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6079017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janjanfollower/pseuds/janjanfollower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vax hasn't spent a night with a lady in years. When everyone's in their rooms in Greyskull Keep and he knocks on Keyleth's door, he suddenly knows why. || spoilers for episode 42</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Let Him In

It had been a long time since Vax found himself in the room of another woman that wasn't his sister. He remembers it once being a flurry of misplaced passion, ripping clothes off flesh like skin from bone of prey Vex had caught when they were parentless and homeless, drinking in his partner like he was hungry and never about to feel another person's touch for years (because more often than not that was the case). Not with Keyleth, however.

He can't even really pinpoint how or where it started. It began with them on her bed, clothed and sitting up and spending quiet moments together. Never would he say it aloud, Scanlan or Vex would give him so much shit if he did, but Vax is pretty sure he could remember the smell of Keyleth up to his death, the smell and sensation of her clouding all else.

He thinks he started it. His thumb absently started stroking hers, their hands held together, before her other hand reached up to hold his cheek, a ghost of touch making his skin feel tingly with maybe more emotional than tactile sense. Then a kiss on her head, a kiss on his hand, his wrist, the tip of her ear, before a small pause. Then she sat up and faced him.

Sarenrae above, she was gorgeous. Not purely her looks, her hair, her eyes; but the radiance the glowed under it all. How her skin was smooth and shining, her eyes a jungle brush even though they were scared. And it was fear more than what was going on beyond their masoned walls. He felt her anxiety, her worry, and her confusion in that wordless minute, that breathless second.

He picked up their hands and kissed her thumb, looking at her the whole time, asking for her approval. She looked away, but didn't remove her hold on his hand. Vax straightened his back immediately. Had he...?

"I..." Keyleth began, voice breaking under disuse for the past, maybe, 30 minutes? He wouldn't speak over her, she deserved to say anything in this formative moment, so she continued. "I haven't ever... It never.... I-I mean--"

"Do you want me to leave?" He asked, gently pulling his hand, but she kept her grip.

"No." She didn't even look up. "I mean... Being with you is... I don't want you to... Not be here." Her pauses were as long as an eternity, but he still hung on them like a worm on hook. She could barely look him in the eyes, she stared at the space that sat between them, and so they stayed as the realization of their actions slowly snowed on their shoulders.

He knows he started from that point on. In all the time he sipped her skin, slid off her clothes as she brushed between his cloth and flesh, he had done it with clear knowledge and a crystalline awareness. To have less would be a disrespect to her, a close friend and someone who he had begun to see sun glow from her being back in the pits in the Underdark, dirt heavy under her fingernails and deep in her hair but still unbridled in her heart's empathy and love.

Years ago, he would've been straightforward, aggressive perhaps. He was always a kind lover, but rarely a considerate one. Rarely when he was in the midst of action did he truly consider the lives of the women he was copulating with. He was young and an ass, and it's excuses he's still going to cling to, even five or so years later. Perhaps it was age or emotion that slowed him down however, for every movement he made with Keyleth was slow and soft, even the thought of accidentally hurting her worried him in ways he couldn't imagine back when he and Vex were runaways from Syngorn.

Through his years, he's always found sex dissatsifying. Not in any tangible way, he always managed to enjoy himself in midnight relationships, but days afterwards lurking in the shadows of buildings he felt a pang in his heart of aloneness. He laid it for years as a loss of belonging, a backdrop of his life for as long as their father had arrived in their lives. Even when he grew up and he and Vex arrived in Stillbend, before Vox Machina or even the S.H.I.Ts had been established, when they were still refugees from the Elven capital and orphans by name, that loneliness had stayed with him so it wasn't an unreasonable guess. With Keyleth though, where they were able to see each other without the gaze of their friends or the city or their duties, as two half-elves simply together after a long day and a long week, he felt something more than himself. Not love, he knows, because he's pretty sure the only love he can really feel is that for his sister. It's something grander but quiet that fills his chest with a sort of anxiety he didn't know he could feel anymore after so much of life, so much killing, he's done. When he held her hand and kissed the back of it, he felt his heart rise to his throat and it felt so natural and human that he couldn't help the grin on his face from growing.

It didn't feel like sex. He knows they went through the motions, felt the feelings and said the things (he couldn't forget, nor would he ever want to), but it didn't feel like sex. It felt... Not normal, because it was such an abnormal thing, but lying down on her bed after, his fingers making slow circles in her wavy ginger hair as she looked at him lazily, _that_  felt normal. For that moment, he could see a snapshot of them, there again, twenty years from now in a life that's not theirs, in a life he wishes he could one day have, and that residual joy brings him to lean forward and kiss Keyleth at the crown of her head.

And outside their walls is a large, ancient red dragon that holds his mother's death. Heh; pretty shitty timing, isn't it Vax?

He'll never have the future he saw for that quick moment in Keyleth's bed, he knows. And maybe, knowing his track record, he won't even have a future. But he has a present, and the present has his friends, his sister, and the woman he respects and cares for so much the idea of treating her as anything but an equal makes his skin crawl. And so long as he has this present, then maybe he won't really need to worry for the future as hard as he does.

**Author's Note:**

> My truest of wishes is that neither Liam O'Brien nor Marisha Ray ever see or god forbid read this fic, so I'm able to die peacefully and with the knowledge some of my favorite content creators haven't read a fanfic where their characters are boning. 
> 
> Big shoutout to ao3 author mischief7manager, for writing some amazing character studies of the VM crew, and whose Vax study I had to read a few times and afterwards repeatedly went 'Oh no, am I being too poetic in my prose??? Does this fic even sound like Vax??????'
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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